I read in order to write. I read out of obsession with writing.  Cynthia Ozick

What does it mean to read as a writer? How can we grow as writers by reading great works of literature?

In this practical workshop, we will look at five short novels or collections of stories (see list below) and explore through writing exercises and discussion how to create new and surprising stories, as well as discover the techniques and themes you can apply to your own work.

The workshop is devised to suit writers of all levels who are willing to try out new ways of writing and thinking about writing. Although we will look closely at the books we read, the focus is very much on your own writing and producing work in the workshop itself and between sessions.

This term’s books are (click on covers below to go to Amazon UK):

Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried
Toni Morrison Sula
Don DeLillo Point Omega
Naguib Mahfuz The Day the Leader Was Killed
Kate Jennings Snake
Dorothy Parker Complete Stories

Dates: Wednesdays (more-or-less fortnightly)
(8 May, 15 May, 29 May, 12 June, 26 June, 3 July)

Venue: Islington (details will be sent on booking)
Time: 6-9pm
Fee: £185 (£160 early-bird booking before 15 March)
tea/coffee and cake/snacks provided

click here to pay via PayPal

or contact shaun [at] shaunlevin.com to pay by cheque or bank transfer

for more details, call 020-7193-7642 or email shaun [at] shaunlevin.com

limited to 8 participants

…who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in every way conceivable… Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium

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A WRITING EXPLORATION OF THE CITY: AN ONLINE COURSE

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8 October – 10 December, 2012

An exciting and practical online writing course to deepen your understanding of a sense of place in both fiction and creative non-fiction, and introduce you to new ways of looking at and engaging with the urban landscape. The course is devised to stimulate your creativity and keep you writing, and will include practical exercises, critique, craft tips, and a close look at relevant literary texts. All participants will be included in an anthology to be published later in the year.

"...fiction depends for it's life on place." Eudora Welty

Write Around Town is an opportunity to look closely at the role of place in the way you write and the themes of your work, as well as being a chance to examine, through writing, the centrality of place to the creation of characters in fiction. So, whether it’s for you or your characters, you’ll be sent out to walk, paddle, eat and write in the city you’re in. You’ll be encouraged to use the city itself – from the Zoo to the Art Gallery – as a rich resource for personal and fictional stories. No matter where you live or what time of day or night you like to write or wander the streets, Write Around Time: Online is a writing adventure that will inspire and surprise you.

For the two months of the course, weekly writing prompts and exercises will be sent to your Inbox, or, if you prefer, to your mail-box at home. The exercises will teach you how to map a character’s (or your own) journey through the city; look closely at the ways in which an environment impacts on psychology; and explore the symbolism in various aspects of the urban landscape. Whether you’re working on fiction, science-fiction or memoir the writing exercises are devised to suit all genres and cities!

“Sense of place is the sixth sense, an internal compass and map made by memory and spatial perception...” Rebecca Solnit

You’ll be encouraged to share your work with other course participants, and will receive regular feedback from the course tutor. Each participant will be offered detailed feedback on one short story written during the course to suggest ways of expanding and refining the story.

The course can be done in real time, or you’re welcome to save the exercises for when you’re ready to write. You can follow the exercises and prompts in the city or town you live in, or take them with you on holiday or while you travel. All course content will be relevant to any urban environment. Writers in remote or rural places are very welcome to join, too!

Together with generating a significant amount of writing, we will also look at extracts from the works of writers who have used the city as setting and inspiration, and, in turn, explore ways of using those texts to roam the city in the name of adventure, discovery, and a deeper connection to the places we know (or think we know) so well.

All participants will be included in Writers in the Crowd, an anthology of writing in the city. A dedicated and password-protected blog will be set up for the course and all participants will be invited to share their work.

The course is aimed at writers of all levels who are looking for new ways of writing about the city, or who have a particular interest in a sense of place in fiction and non-fiction, or who just need that extra nudge to write more. Please contact me if you have any queries.

All participants will:

• get weekly exercises and prompts
• be included in an anthology of city writing, Writers in the Crowd
• be able to contribute to the course’s dedicated blog
• receive detailed feedback on a story written during the course
• be encouraged to interact with other writers online

limited to 16 participants (3 places remaining)

The Write Around Town: Online Course runs alongside the Write Around Town workshop in London.

Course tutor: Shaun Levin

Shaun Levin is the author of Seven Sweet Things, A Year of Two Summers, and Snapshots of the Boy. His most recent work is a fictional biography of the London-born painter, Mark Gertler. He has taught writing for twenty years in colleges and other settings, and run workshops in cafes, art galleries, bookshops, parks, a cemetery, and a zoo. Shaun is passionate about exploring the landscape, the sea, the urban environment, as well as other art forms to enrich our stories and take writing to new and unexpected places. He has lived in London for the past fifteen years and has made the city an integral and important part of his work. Shaun is also the founding editor of the literary journal, Chroma, and is the director of Treehouse Press.

Dates: 8 October until 10 December

Venue: At Home and in Your City

Fee: £190 (£165 early-bird booking before 20 August)

Click here to pay through PayPal, or to pay by bank transfer/cheque, please contact shaun [at] shaunlevin.com

Previous participants said: I like the exercises, they have ample content but are not too rigid, a nice balance. ◙ I love that it’s online as I can fit it into my daily life. ◙ The feedback to one another is very helpful and an interesting variety of people/writers contributing.

How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. (Kurt Vonnegut)

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6 October – 1 December 2012

An exciting and practical writing workshop exploring ways of engaging with the city through writing. Whether it’s for you or your characters, we’ll create stories in museums and art galleries, on side streets and waterways, while eating and walking, and use the city landscape – from the hidden herb garden to Soho’s historic streets – as a rich resource for personal and fictional stories. The workshop will teach you how to map a character’s journey (and your own) through the city; look closely at ways in which the environment impacts on their psychology; and explore the shapes and symbolic resonances of the urban landscape. London will be our laboratory, so whether you’re writing fiction, science-fiction or memoir, the exercises are devised to suit all genres and cities!

All participants will be included in a final anthology of work, and be invited to contribute to the project’s blog.

You’ll also get to explore the works of other writers who’ve used the city as the setting and inspiration for their fiction, and be guided by psychogeography‘s principles to roam the city in the name of discovery and transformation, and to deepen your understanding of your own place in London’s landscape.

There’ll be writing suggestions and exercises between each session. All participants will be included in Writers in the Crowd, an anthology of writing in the city. A dedicated and password-protected Course Blog will be available for participants to share their work throughout the workshop.

limited to 8 participants (1 place remaining)

The workshop will be led by Shaun Levin

• Day 1: Introductions, Approaches to Writing the City (6 Oct)
• Day 2: The Naming of Things: Geffrye Museum and Herb Garden (13 Oct)
• Day 3: A Collaborative Map: Seven Dials and Tea at the Covent Garden Hotel (27 Oct)
• Day 4: Moving Pictures: Tate Modern, Thames Walk or Boat Ride (10 Nov)
• Day 5: In Sickness and Health: Old Operating Theatre Museum and Borough Market (24 Nov)
• Day 6: Putting it All Together: Shaping the Work (1 Dec)

Shaun Levin is the author of Seven Sweet Things, A Year of Two Summers, and Snapshots of the Boy. His most recent work is a fictional biography of the London-born painter, Mark Gertler. He has taught writing for twenty years, and run workshops in cafes, art galleries, bookshops, parks, a cemetery, and a zoo. Shaun is passionate about exploring the landscape, the sea, the urban environment, as well as other art forms to enrich our stories and take writing to new and unexpected places. He has lived in London for the past fifteen years and has made the city an integral and important part of his work.

Dates: Saturdays (fortnightly, except second and last weeks)
(6 October, 13 October, 27 October, 10 November, 24 November, 1 December)

Venue: Various
Time: 2.30-5.30pm
Fee: £265 (£230 early-bird booking before 20 August)
price includes entrance fees, tea and cake at The Covent Garden Hotel, and boat ride

Click to pay, or contact shaun [at] shaunlevin.com for other methods of payment and any questions

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I read in order to write. I read out of obsession with writing.  Cynthia Ozick

What does it mean to read as a writer? How can we grow as writers by reading great works?

In this practical workshop, we will look at five novels or collections of stories and one book on writing (see list below) and explore through writing exercises and discussion how to create new and surprising stories, as well as discover the techniques and themes you can apply to your own work.

The workshop is devised to suit writers of all levels who are willing to try out new ways of writing and thinking about writing. Although we will look closely at the books we read, the focus is very much on your own writing and producing work in the workshop itself and between sessions.

This term’s books are (click on covers below to go to Amazon UK): Lorrie Moore Self-Help; Sjön The Blue Fox; George Saunders Pastoralia; Jana LeoRape New York; Al Alvarez The Writer’s Voice; Sei Shonagon The Pillow Book

Dates: Wednesdays (fortnightly)
(3 Oct, 17 Oct, 31 Oct, 14 Nov, 28 Nov, 12 Dec)

Venue: Islington (details will be sent on booking)
Time: 6-9pm
Fee: £185 (£160 early-bird booking before 20 August)
tea/coffee and cake/snacks provided

click here to pay via PayPal

or contact shaun [at] shaunlevin.com to pay by cheque/bank transfer

for more details, call 020-7193-7642 or email shaun [at] shaunlevin.com

limited to 8 participants (3 places remaining)

…who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in every way conceivable… Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium

)

.
An exciting and practical writing course to deepen your understanding of a sense of place in both fiction and creative non-fiction, and introduce you to new ways of looking at and engaging with the urban landscape. The course is devised to stimulate your creativity and keep you writing, and will include practical exercises, critique, craft tips, and some close study of literary texts. All participants will be included in an anthology to be published later in the year.

"...fiction depends for it's life on place." Eudora Welty

Write Around Town: DIY is an opportunity to look closely at the role of place in the way you write and the themes of your work, as well as being a chance to examine, through writing, the centrality of place to the creation of characters in fiction. So, whether it’s for you or your characters, you’ll be sent out to walk, paddle, eat and write in the city you’re in. You will use the city itself – from the Zoo to the Art Gallery – as a rich resource for personal and fictional stories. No matter where you live or what time of day or night you like to write or wander the streets, Write Around Time: DIY is a writing adventure that will inspire and surprise you.

For the two months of the course, weekly writing prompts and exercises will be sent to your Inbox, or, if you prefer, to your mail-box at home. The exercises will teach you how to map a character’s (or your own) journey through the city; look closely at the ways in which an environment impacts on psychology; and explore the symbolic resonances of aspects of the urban landscape, from bridges to biodiversity, waterways to “watering holes”. Whether you’re working on fiction, science-fiction or memoir the writing exercises are devised to suit all genres and cities!

“Sense of place is the sixth sense, an internal compass and map

made by memory and spatial perception…” Rebecca Solnit

You’ll be encouraged to share your work with other course participants, and will receive regular feedback from the course tutor. Each participant will be offered detailed feedback on one short story written during the course to suggest ways of expanding and refining the story.

The course can be done in real time, or you’re welcome to save the exercises for when you’re ready to write. You can follow the exercises and prompts in the city or town you live in, or take them with you on holiday or while you travel. All course content will be relevant to any urban environment.

Together with generating a significant amount of writing, we will also look at extracts from the works of writers who have used the city as setting and inspiration for their fiction. From Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, to Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, from Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building to Dickens’ Sketches by Boz, and from Balzac’s A Street of Paris to Jane DeLynn’s Don Juan in the Village… we’ll be inspired by these extracts to roam the city in the name of writing. Each participant will also be given a personalised suggested reading list.

All participants will be included in Writers in the Crowd, an anthology of writing in the city. A dedicated and password-protected blog will be set up for the course and all participants will be invited to share their work.

All participants will:

• get weekly exercises and prompts
• be included in an anthology of city writing, Writers in the Crowd
• be able to contribute to the course’s dedicated blog
• receive detailed feedback on a story written during the course
• be given a customised reading list
• be encouraged to interact with other writers online

limited to 15 participants

The online course Write Around Town: DIY runs alongside the Write Around Town workshop in London.

Course tutor: Shaun Levin

Shaun Levin is the author of Seven Sweet Things, A Year of Two Summers, and Snapshots of the Boy. His most recent work is a fictional biography of the London-born painter, Mark Gertler. He has taught writing for twenty years in colleges and other settings, and run workshops in cafes, art galleries, bookshops, parks, a cemetery, and a zoo. Shaun is passionate about exploring the landscape, the sea, the urban environment, as well as other art forms to enrich our stories and take writing to new and unexpected places. He has lived in London for the past fifteen years and has made the city an integral and important part of his work. Shaun is also the founding editor of the literary journal, Chroma, and is the director of Treehouse Press.

Dates: 26 May until 28 July

Venue: Home and around town

Fee: £190 (£150 early-bird booking before 5 May)

The course is now full

Please contact me if you’d like to go onto the mailing list to be notified of the next course starting in September 2012:

shaun [at] shaunlevin.com

GET OUT THERE, GET WRITING, GET FEEDBACK, GET PUBLISHED

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This exciting and practical writing workshop explores ways of engaging with the city through writing. Whether it’s for you or your characters, we’ll walk, write, and eat in central London, and use the city landscape – from Zoo to Art – as a rich resource for personal and fictional stories. The workshop will teach you how to map a character’s journey through the city; look closely at how the environment impacts on their psychology; and explore the symbolic resonances of the urban landscape, from bridges to biodiversity. London will be our laboratory, so whether you’re writing fiction, science-fiction or memoir the exercises are devised to suit all genres and cities!

All participants will be included in a final anthology of work, and be invited to contribute to the project’s blog.

We’ll create stories at the zoo; write while taking a boat ride on the Thames; take tea and notes at Fortnum & Mason; and visit the Picasso exhibition at Tate Britain. We’ll also explore the works of other writers – and meet a couple – who’ve used the city as the setting and inspiration for their fiction. From Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, to Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, from Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building to Defoe’s Journal of a Plague Year, and from Balzac’s A Street of Paris to Jane DeLynn’s Don Juan in the Village… we’ll examine extracts from these works and others, and be inspired by psychogeography to roam the city in the name of writing.

There’ll be writing suggestions and exercises between each session. All participants will be included in Writers in the Crowd, an anthology of writing in the city. A dedicated and password-protected blog will be set up for the workshop and all participants will be invited to share their work.

limited to 8 participants

The workshop will be led by Shaun Levin

Special guests: Olumide Popoola and Jonathan Kemp

Day 1: London Zoo

Day 2: Thames Walk and Boat Ride

Day 3: Tea Tales at Fortnum’s

Day 4: Picasso at Tate Britain

Day 5: The City in Fiction

Day 6: London Writers

Shaun Levin is the author of Seven Sweet Things, A Year of Two Summers, and Snapshots of the Boy. His most recent work is a fictional biography of the London-born painter, Mark Gertler. He has taught writing for twenty years, and run workshops in cafes, art galleries, bookshops, parks, a cemetery, and a zoo. Shaun is passionate about exploring the landscape, the sea, the urban environment, as well as other art forms to enrich our stories and take writing to new and unexpected places. He has lived in London for the past fifteen years and has made the city an integral and important part of his work.

Olumide Popoola is the author of this is not about sadness which traces the threads that bind a few women in a North London neighbourhood. A Nigerian German author, poet, and performer, her work is concerned with a critical investigation into the “in-between” of culture, language and public space. She is currently working on a cross-genre novel, exploring vernacular and hybrid literary forms. Her work has been published in anthologies since 1988 in Germany, Slovenia, South Africa, the USA, Sri Lanka, the UK and Nigeria. In 2004 she was awarded the May Ayim Award (Poetry), the first Black International Literature Award in Germany.

Jonathan Kemp was born in Manchester in 1967 but has lived in London since 1989. His first novel, London Triptych, weaves together three narratives set in London in three different times: 1895, 1953 and 1998. It won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. His work consistently engages with the city and he teaches courses on London at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is particularly interested in sexual subcultures and how the city gets written, how histories of the city construct archeologies which provide rich seams for a writer to mine.

Dates: Saturdays (fortnightly, except last two weeks)
(26 May, 9 June, 23 June, 7 July, 21 July, 28 July)

Venue: Various
Time: 3-6pm
Fee: £250 (£210 early-bird booking before 5 May)
price includes entrance fees, tea and cake at Fortnum’s, and boat ride

The workshop is now full. Please contact me if you’d like to go onto the waiting list: shaun [at] shaunlevin.com There are still a few places on the online course

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What makes a short story a classic and how do you write one?

In this monthly workshop, we’ll look closely at four “classic” short stories in an attempt to pinpoint what makes them into masterpieces. We will then work with four of your own stories (one a month) and explore ways of enriching them with the elements of a true classic.

The stories we’ll look at this term are: “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, “A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf, “The Fly” by Katherine Mansfield, “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff

The workshop is aimed at writers with experience of writing workshops and who have at least four stories they’ve been working on for some time.

Dates: Sundays (monthly)
(13 May, 10 June, 8 July, 12 August)

Venue: Islington (details will be sent on booking)
Time: 2-5pm
Fee: £165 (£150 early-bird booking before 20 March)
tea/coffee and cake/snacks provided

pay via PayPal or send cheque made payable to “Shaun Levin” to:
Shaun Levin, PO Box 65016, London N5 9BD
for more details, call 020-7193-7642 or email shaun@shaunlevin.com

limited to 6 participants (1 place remaining)

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What does it mean to read as a writer? How can we grow as writers by reading great works? In this practical workshop, we will look at six short novels or collections of stories (see list below) and explore through writing exercises and discussion how to create new and surprising stories, as well as discover the techniques and themes you can apply to your own work.

The workshop is devised for writers of all levels who are willing to try out new ways of writing and thinking about writing.

This term’s books are (click on covers below to go to Amazon): Jamaica Kincaid At the Bottom of the River; Javier Cercas The Tenant; Cynthia Ozick The Shawl; Plato The Symposium (Trans. Christopher Gill); Carole Maso Aureole; Rudyard Kipling Just So Stories

Dates: Wednesdays (fortnightly)
(18 April, 2 May, 16 May, 30 May, 13 June, 27 June)

Venue: Islington (details will be sent on booking)
Time: 6-9pm
Fee: £185 (£160 early-bird booking before 20 March)
tea/coffee and cake/snacks provided

pay via PayPal or send cheque made payable to “Shaun Levin” to:
Shaun Levin, PO Box 65016, London N5 9BD
for more details, call 020-7193-7642 or email shaun@shaunlevin.com

limited to 8 participants (1 place remaining)

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